The Church of The Dude: A spiritual rereading of The Big Lebowski

Fourteen years after its release, it’s easy to forget that the Coen brothers’ comedy The Big Lebowski was actually a box-office bomb that earned lukewarm reviews when it first lumbered onto screens in 1998.

The mighty cult that has since developed around the film, not to the mention the revisionist plaudits it now receives from critics, doesn’t change the fact that it was initially regarded as a rather slight outing for the Coens, a goofy followup to the pitch-perfect dark comedy of Fargo.

My relationship with the film, I will admit, was similar. Don’t get me wrong, I loved it from the first time I saw it. Then again, I have loved every Coen brothers’ film

(Yes, naysayers, that includes the Ladykillers. Those who don’t understand the zany brilliance of this film remind me of those who question the point of the witheringly funny Marge Gunderson-Mike Yanagita exchange in Fargo, or the chillingly abrupt final scene in No Country For Old Men. You don’t get it. Stick to the Twilight Saga! But I digress . . .)

But while I laughed throughout The Big Lebowski, I initially thought it was a bit garbled and not up to snuff compared to the dark-shaded brilliance of Fargo, Blood Simple and Barton Fink.

But my appreciation of the film has grown over the years to the point where it may now be my favourite from the Coen canon. It’s one of those rare films that gets funnier with each viewing. It’s deceptively simple premise — a pot-addled layabout accidentally becomes involved in a film-noir mystery — seems more inspired every time I watch it. The cult that has sprang up around the film has a lot to do with the main character, one of the more oddly likeable protagonists in modern film. He’s pretentious enough (as only an ex-hippie can be) to refer to himself in the third person when flustered (” Yeah, okay, but see, the Dude . . . “), smart enough to realize he’s in over his head and lazy enough to not really want to do anything about it. But he also has a big heart and unusually good taste in music for someone living in California (“I hate the f—ing Eagles, man”) Jeff Bridges embodies the role so thoroughly and believably that, despite an impressively eclectic run of roles before and after the film, many assume he shares The Dude’s characteristics in real life. Festivals have been started around the film, as has a tongue-in-cheek religion called Dudeism that reportedly has 150,000 registered “Dudeist priests” and a great spiritual mantra to “practice as little as possible.” And, as with many cult films, some of the more academically inclined adherents have also discovered layers of complexity that were initially missed. Along with countless dissertations and academic papers about the film, critics such as Slate’s David Haglund have detected a political subtext lurking under the caper plot. The Big Lebowski, Haglund gamely argues, eerily foreshadows both the second Iraq war and rise of neoconservatism.

And now the Dude himself, Jeff Bridges, has joined the Dude-as-a-metaphor discussion in a big way with a book called The Dude and the Zen Master (Blue Rider Press, 272 Pages, $28.50). Written with Zen teacher Bernie Glassman, it takes the form of a wonderfully rambling dialogue between the two. In the intro, Bridges reports that Bernie once told him that many Buddhists consider the Dude to be a Zen master, which prompted the very Dude-like “What the f–k are you talkin’ ’bout, man?” response from the actor. But the two proceed to wring life lessons about peace, love, art, death and the importance of doing good from snippets of dialogue. A section based around the Dude’s simple answering machine message — “The Dude is not in, leave a message” — occupies many pages of thought, ending with Glassman concluding that “when we are not in, creation can happen.” Um . . . fair enough.

It’s all heady stuff, and the book is out just in time to be a handy companion for those who want to take in The Big Lebowski in big-screen glory this Friday at the Plaza at 10 p.m. Whatever the Coens were up to politically and spiritually, it remains one of the funniest films ever made. And, as with all good films, should really be seen with others on the big screen.

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